


And Now For... The Weather

by Queenspuppet



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Avengers in Night Vale, Bucky Barnes Feels, Canon typical Violence (for Night Vale so pretty mild), Darcy the only living Intern, F/M, Home Is Where Your Underground Bunker Is, LOVECRAFTIAN MONSTERS, Night Vale Dog Park, Steve is an oblivious idiot, Surrealism, Whispering Forest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:17:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5755078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenspuppet/pseuds/Queenspuppet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was nice of Steve to want to take Bucky on a brotherly vacation. But taking Clint’s advice on the destination might not have been the best idea. With Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis as their tour guides, the little town of Night Vale - where monsters run for Mayor and winged Angels care more about the World Series results than the local population - is unlike any place Bucky’s ever seen. Strangeness aside, and boy is there plenty, the desert town’s not the worst place to lie sleepless at night.</p><p>Abandoned after the Author entered the Dog Park. DO NOT GO INTO THE DOG PARK.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Good Times...Shouldn't Be This Hard To Find

Steve said the vacation was because they’d worked through all the Winter Soldier’s programming, which Bucky thought was debatable. He suspected it was more about Steve wanting to recover some long lost camaraderie with quality buddy-time.

Why he took Clint’s advice on destination was a mystery. Clint was a little sore about sharing the marksman title for the group and was also, according to Tony, a ‘chronic troll.’

“Honestly,” the archer had assured them with a smugly beatific smile. “This place is so far removed, there’s not a chance anyone who’s looking for Bucky will find him. There’s literally only one way I know of to get there. Hell, no one’s even gonna recognize you, Rogers.”

Trip by space portal should have been their first clue.

Well, it _was_ Bucky’s first clue.

Steve just shouldered his bag on the facility lawn and threw an arm around Bucky’s rigid back, lifting the proverbial thumb for Thor’s buddy Heimdall.

Steve’s grip tightened as a cylinder of light raced down from the sky to swallow them up. Bucky’s gut fisted and lifted, dragging the rest of his body behind him in a way that made his body feel distinctly separate in its layers, his skin like an ill-fitting suit. Thor told them the trip to Asgard took roughly under a minute, but that this was a bit longer. Which seemed wrong, because Asgard was in space, right? And where they were going was… well, he assumed it was on Earth. No one had been very clear about it, actually. Still, they were staying with Thor’s astrophysicst girl-friend and she was from the States so he had assumed…

There was no way of telling time but Bucky was rounding the ‘hurtling-through-space-at-something-above-lightspeed-while-wanting-to-revisit-breakfast’ experience up to twenty minutes. Long enough that he and Steve were uncomfortably shifting, trying to find better ways of hanging on to each other so they didn’t end up falling out of Heimdall’s portal and lost in endless nothing for eternity.

The stars around them grew dimmer, fading into dust motes until they were surrounded by oppressive darkness. Bucky cleared his throat. He felt an old breed of nerves, something like the fear of dark he’d had at night when he was just a kid. Then everything around them exploded into a stunning, shifting, incandescent light. Stars as huge as houses that glimmered in ever-changing colors, whipped past them from indeterminate distances. The white noise of air - maybe? - whipping past them grew to thunder, vibrating inside his hand and sinking into his spine, making everything one deafening ringing note.

Bucky lowered his head under the pressure of sound and light and a stunning terror and found there was now ground beneath his feet. Dusty, golden ground that scattered with one scorching hot rush of air that smelled like old corners of libraries and a sharp sting of creosote.

He lifted his head, his hands still digging into Steve’s side.

Sand. For miles. Hills of it that curled and crested like waves to their right, and a flat expanses that glimmered with hazy, watery, layers of heat.

_Your ass looks fantastic in those jeans._

Bucky pulled immediately away from Steve, going stiff at the voice. At the voices. A harmony of whispers that blended into something luring and nearly song like. It was not a whisper in his ear, or from anywhere nearby, but he turned slowly to check his back, regardless. A warning to Steve died in his throat

Behind them, for no apparent reason, was a forest. Trees bursting up from a desert, thick and aged with soft green moss, roots arching out of the ground like old shoulders. The damp of them drifted towards him, slipping in with an involuntary breath and soothing at his heat and dust parched throat. Still. Ecologically, Bucky was standing in a desert.

“Rogers,” Bucky said, not taking his eyes off the forest.

“Huh,” Steve said at his side, still busy examining the watercolored expanse of sand ahead of them. “This…wasn’t what I was hoping for, to be honest.”

_You are totally rocking the hobo chic,_ the whispers continued. The cool notes of their voices running shivers down his spine even as the sun glared down hotly against his skin. _I love your sensitive gaze_.

Oh, Jesus. Was he getting worse?

“Steve,” Bucky tried again, shifting a little to bump his shoulder

Steve lifted his arm away and pointed out into the distance. “Somebody’s coming.”

_You are such a strong person._

Bucky winced and looked away from the forest. And out there, bumping along the waves of orange like it was a prow spearing through water, a Frankenstein vehicle of parts and pieces and satellites and antennas was headed their way.

“Yeah,” Steve’s face relaxed a fraction. “That’ll be Miss Foster for us.”

_You have survived so much hardship. Come, let us help you heal._

“Yeah, no,” Bucky growled, glaring back at the trees - still just trees - behind him. God. He was talking to trees. He was definitely getting worse.

“It’ll be fine, Buck,” Steve said, shrugging. “She’s pretty laid back, really. And her assistant is…”

What her assistant was, if anything, was drowned out by the arrival of the van. If something which seemed to essentially be a box of soldered together scraps of metal that was conveniently placed on wheels could be termed a van. There were windows, at least.

Leaning out of the window closest to them was a girl covered in fine layer of road dust with a pile of hair that was probably dark and the sweetest looking set of full lips Bucky could ever recall seeing. She lifted a pair of sunglasses that covered her from her eyebrows to half-way down her cheeks, and blinked a pair of shocking blue eyes at them.

“You should get in the back and definitely not go into that forest,” the girl said, stare narrowed over Bucky’s right shoulder.

“Sorry, I assumed Heimdall would drop you closer to town,” said the woman in the drivers seat. She was tiny and frail-boned but she looked like the commander of her ship behind the oversized wheel of the van, so Bucky could see what drew in a warrior like Thor.

“Not a problem, Miss Foster.” Steve picked up both their bags from the ground. And godammit, Steve, he’d gotten the serum too and the least his Hydra prosthetic could do was carry a damn bag. Bucky hesitated, resisting the urge to check over his shoulder for what was probably a hallucination, before following Steve to the back of the van. There was a partial walland hand rails to haul themselves up by, and they squeezed their way in through the hoard of outdated machinery patched to state of the art technology. The bench seat behind the women was an honest to God church pew.

What the hell?

Steve was beaming in that way of his that meant he was supremely uncomfortable - all cheeks, no teeth - but they sat.

_Come back soon, soldier of our heart_ , the trees whispered in farewell.

“Time to go,” Jane Foster said, with wary tone as if she’d heard the words too.

Bucky stiffened on the bench but the assistant just leaned out the makeshift window.

“Better luck, next time, sluts!” She shouted at the forest.

Steve caught Bucky’s eye and shrugged with a little grimace, as if to apologize for the girl.

Bucky was torn between thanking her - she definitely saw them too so that much, at least, was real - and taking a running leap back out of the van to ask if Heimdall could please take him home now.

What kind of vacation were they taking?

“We really appreciate you having us,” Steve told Jane, grabbing an over head handle bar, to keep from bouncing right off the pew. Bucky clenched his hands along the seat. He had a way of keeping quiet back when he was still the Asset, and proceeded to pretend his jaw was screwed shut to keep from giving his honest experience about the trip so far and its highly suspect destination.

“It’s good to have company,” Jane said, skirting around a sudden - literally, sudden, as in it honestly hadn’t been there moments before - tear in the cracked landscape. Bucky leaned and looked out the assistant’s window at the gaping black space just feet from their right tires. A belch of blue fire exhaled from the opening before the ground rattled shut again. Neither women mentioned the phenomenon. Steve was busy watching a blue helicopter circle the air ahead of them.

“What’s that?” Bucky asked, pointing at the helicopter while his metal arm itched for a weapon.

“Sheriff’s Secret Police,” the assistant said.

Steve laughed and shook his head again. The girl turned in her seat to smile innocently at Steve and then met Bucky’s gaze, eyes laughing. She winked and Bucky’s heart stuttered.

“Outsider perspectives are always welcome to my research here,” Jane continued. “In an environment as unique-” the younger woman snorted, “-as unique as Night Vale, it can be hard sometimes to remember what a baseline ‘normal’ is.”

 

__________________________________

 

Three hours later after a drive-by tour of the town, dropping their bags and grabbing a shower at Jane’s small but accommodating duplex apartment, and dinner at the most intimidatingly friendly pizza place he’d ever visited, Bucky was compiling a list of what was ‘normal’ in Night Vale.

1\. While Steve had paid for their dinner inside Rico’s Pizza, Darcy - the assistant - led Bucky outside for a breath of sticky-hot but fresh air.

Passing them on the sidewalk was a five-headed dragon.

Before Bucky’s arm could do more than whirr in battle preparation, Darcy laid her hand over his elbow and gently pressed him back a step.

“Hey, Hiram,” she said to the five headed dragon, while holding Bucky’s gaze with an open and relaxed expression.

“Howdy, Miss Lewis,” said the golden head, with a courtly tip.

“The red sun rises and calls upon an age of blood rivers and unending darkness,” bellowed the green head. The other three simply swayed, scales glinting with the pink glow of the setting sun as the dragon lumbered down the block.

“Close your mouth,” Darcy murmured to Bucky. “The violet head is touchy and thinks staring is rude.”

Bucky snapped his mouth shut, teeth jarring together, and turned his back to the dragon.

“He’s mostly a nice guy,” Darcy said in consolation.

2\. Jane Foster offered a running list of recommendations for places to _not_ visit, as they passed.

Dark Owl Records was okay except they really just wanted your money and to judge your tastes. It was when ghostly guest performers showed up that you really didn’t want to stop by. No matter how much you like Buddy Holly. The library was not peaceful and they should definitely let either Jane or Darcy know if they really insisted upon going. “Take knives,” Darcy added, making Steve give Bucky what was becoming an increasingly annoying look of exasperation. The Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex was mostly safe, but if they saw anything coming up from Lane 5 it was time to leave.

3\. There were lights glowing in the sky, pulsing like breaths. They were not stars. They hovered over buildings and trailed behind otherwise average looking people on the street. Bucky had lifted his hand to brush against one floating gently over a newspaper dispenser. Darcy hip checked him away from it.

“What do they do?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t know,” Darcy admitted. “But do you really think you want to?”

4\. Angels.

There were Angels.

Just…walking around.

At least that’s what Darcy called them, in a soft whisper.

“Their names are Erica if you really need to talk to them,” she said.

They didn’t look like any kind of angel Brother Byrne had talked about back during catechism classes. They were enormously tall, taller than Thor, with skin that looked paper thin, especially where it stretched between fine bones that folded like fans against their backs. They had six pale eyes lined two by two down their faces, and dark patterns of dots and lines that seemed to be their best identifying marks aside from the range of skin tones. They trailed feathers but sported none.

They were terrifying actually, but when Bucky looked at the crowd of four that stood at the edge of a car lot, he felt a sense of safeness he’d forgotten from years ago.

And the whole damn time it was like Steve was in a completely different town. He laughed at Jane’s descriptions like they were jokes, rolled his eyes at Darcy’s warnings like she was being intentionally evocative, and let his eyes skim over the strangest details. Like the pack of young boys wearing vests pinned with accomplishment badges and medals, waving bloodied hatchets in the air as they screamed war cries while running down the center of the street and dodging cars.

Bucky stopped at a corner and stared across the road at the gleaming black brick walls that stretched the length of a block but seemed to hold an infinite length of space inside. He looked one way and then the other, finding building just a short distance away in either direction, but from the corner seeing only endless stretches of space punctuated by small batches of trees. Coming from the left, just behind the wall, were dark shadowy figures hooded in black and walking in mass. From across the corner he could almost hear voices, deep and rhythmic chanting.

“HEY!”

Bucky looked back up the sidewalk to where Darcy was charging at him. Before he could stop her, before he even knew what she was about to do, she had his face between her warm hands and tugged down till he was bent over, eye level. The gears in his arms were snapping and clicking and he had to lock every muscle in his body to keep from thrashing out, throwing her to the ground, finding a knife.

“Do. Not. Look. At. The. Dog. Park.” She ordered. Her eyes were wide and almost purple under the eerie street lamps. She looked suddenly and desperately earnest when all evening she’d calmly guided him through the strangeness. She had such a strong grip on his face he could feel her fingertips pressing into his temples. “Never go there. Never look there. Do not think about that place. It does not exist. You do not see anything there. There is no sidewalk to walk on, never cross to that side of that street.” Her voice was breaking and her eyes were filling up and her pale cheeks had streaks of red across their tops. He couldn’t tell if she was more angry, or afraid. Then she added, as an afterthought, “And don’t wonder about the hooded figures, yeah?”

Bucky couldn’t nod, because he couldn’t move his face, because she was still gripping it fiercely. So he blinked in understanding. She let him go, pulled her coat tighter around her body, somewhat fruitlessly since it didn’t seem to want to button over her chest anyways, and turned to catch up with the others. Bucky took a breath. But he didn’t look back across the street. And he tried not to wonder why this was not allowed. It only took a few strides to catch up with her. Steve was paused at the end of the block, looking back with his now patented Captain America is Concerned face, but he didn’t seem to be interested in the ‘Dog Park’ across the street, no great surprise by this point

“I lost my intern in that park,” Darcy said quietly, although her voice had lost it’s heat and quiver.

“I thought you were the intern,” Bucky said, with honest confusion.

“Yeah,” Darcy said. “I guess he was kinda my boyfriend, really.”

Bucky flinched and almost looked back.

“Doesn’t matter,” she added, and the sadness there was old and faded, almost tender. “No one comes out.”

 

* * *

 

AN: Hello darlings!!

I've been really excited about this story for awhile, so I'm thrilled to finally be posting. Special thanks to JanetSnakehole, my marvelous beta and story conspirator.

If you aren't familiar with the podcast Welcome To Nightvale, I will try and keep this story as general audience friendly as possible. The podcast has a section on every episode where they take us to the weather forecast, which is actually just them playing a song. In honor of that tradition, which I love, the chapter titles are lyrics taken from songs which resonated with me while I was writing. This chapter title is from Father On by Vetiver.

 

Please let me know what you think! It's writing fuel and I love hearing from story friends. 

Love.


	2. I Got A Message For The Acolytes, I am Your Man In A Bloody Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from Lewis Takes Action by Owen Pallett
> 
> Here is some of the 'Canon Typical Violence (for Night Vale)' which is essentially more suspense and creepiness and nothing terrible happens. It starts when they get into the library and ends before the next break. It's also might be one of my favorite fanfic scenes I've written.  
> Disclaimer: Any alterations or mistakes to WTNV or MCU canon are a combination of human error and personal leniency. I own nothing but I love to play!

Bucky did not wake the next morning.

Because he never slept that night.

True, he didn’t sleep most nights. But that was an urgent sleeplessness, a desperate mission to _stay awake_ and _not dream_.

In the small, lumpy, top bunk of Jane’s guest room, he lay quietly and restfully awake. He never felt tired or near dreaming, he just felt the weight of dark and soundless stillness. He didn’t wonder why he was awake because if he’d learned one thing during his six hours in the town it was that wondering about something didn’t mean there was an answer.

Steve tossed and turned on the bunk below him, but Bucky didn’t tell him he was awake. And he shut his eyes and pretended to sleep when Steve got up and paced the room, and then the hall, and then the whole house.

Bucky waited for the sun to come up and a pair of feet to shuffle in uneven steps down the hall before he sat up in the bunk, nearly braining himself against the ceiling. He waited until he smelled coffee before getting out of bed.

Steve was sitting, dwarfing the chair, knees bumping uncomfortably against the kitchen table. Darcy putzed at the counter, staring at the coffee maker like she was waiting for it to get up and dance. Hell, maybe they did that here.

“How’d you sleep, Stevie?” Bucky asked, innocently.

Steve grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. Bucky caught Darcy’s lips twitch in a smirk before she let her hair swing forward and hide her face. Nice hair, he thought. Shiny and soft looking and long enough to-

It’d get caught in the gears of your arm, he reminded himself darkly.

“Alright,” Steve lied. “Maybe just restless from the travel.”

The coffee maker beeped and Darcy sighed, pouring herself a cup immediately.

To Bucky’s mind, it didn’t smell like coffee. Too rich and sweet. He had a fleeting scrap of memory flit into vision. New York in winter, passing department stores where men and women, with heavy wool coats and fur collars, lined windows of the cafes. Their cheeks were pink and they held cups of steamy, fragrant, chocolate. It came alongside the feeling of being small, and cold, and hungry.

He took the mug Darcy passed him and loaded his coffee with as much thick cream and sugar as he could without spilling it over the brim.

“Got your sweet tooth back,” Steve noted, brightening.

Bucky ‘hmph’ed, and took a sip. It was good. He’d add more sugar after making room.

Jane thumped down the stairs and came into the room looking like she actually had slept, eyes crusted and hair sticking out at odd directions. She held a cell phone to her ear and grunted into it occasionally. Darcy prepped another mug of coffee, black as night, and passed it to a flailing hand, making sure Jane had hold of it before letting go herself.

“Science deprivation,” Darcy whispered as explanation.

“Okay, love you,” Jane mumbled into the phone. “Be careful.”

She held it out to Darcy who took it and immediately began chattering a monologue of “Long time no see, broski! How’s it hanging, Hammertime?” and other unintelligible phrases, while walking out of the kitchen and into the living room.

“Thor?” Steve asked Jane.

“Yeah,” she sighed, running one hand into her hair before catching it in tangles and wincing as she pulled it out again. “Actually, he says there’s a situation back home. The team would like Heimdall to pick you up in an hour or so, if you’re up for it.”

“Oh,” said Steve. And Bucky could see the flicker of relief on his face before he turned it into a grimace and looked at him. “Umm…”

Bucky spoke without thinking. “You should go. I’ll be here when you get back.”

“You want to stay?” And he sounded so surprised that Bucky could almost have smacked him upside the head for being rude in front of the lady. Jane just hid a smile behind a long slurp of coffee.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, lifting an eyebrow. “I’m on vacation, ain’t I?”

Steve’s mouth fell open a little, and Bucky braced himself for what might come out. Probably something about Bucky not being ready to be on his own yet. Or, would it be safe for Jane and Darcy?

“Bye, big guy,” Darcy said to the phone and then held it out to Steve who was still gaping.

He cleared his throat and greeted Thor over the phone, murmuring a few affirmatives before pausing and staring at Bucky.

Bucky stared back. Darcy and Jane pretended they weren’t staring.

Steve sighed finally. “Yeah, I’ll be ready. Bucky’s gonna hang here with the ladies. Alright, yeah, see you soon.”

 

* * *

 

 

Steve left by space portal - Einstein-Rosen Bridge, Jane said - an hour later from the backyard. He’d patted Bucky on the shoulder and made false starts at speaking a few times before light streaked down from the sky and Bucky darted out of the way at the last moment.

Darcy turned to him once Steve was rushed away in color and sound, and squinted. She tilted her head to the side and studied him from head to toe.

“So how many weapons do you have on your person, right now?” she asked.

“Half-dozen,” Bucky admitted, startled by the question. “Give or take.”

Darcy grinned, girlish and sweet like he’d just turned up at her doorstep with flowers and an invitation to step-out together.

“Awesome, want to make a run to the Library?”

She was walking back into the house and Bucky followed at a stumble. They passed a window and Bucky could see Jane in the driveway, packing more mismatched gear into the back of the van.

“Aren’t I supposed to stay away from there?” Bucky asked.

“You’re not supposed to go _alone_ ,” Darcy emphasized. “But I’ve got to pick up a couple books for Jane and you look like the kind of man who’d be handy to have around in a tight place. Like a Library stack full of blood thirsty old women who love their papery charges almost as much as they love maiming local literary enthusiasts.”

Bucky blinked and was glad Steve wasn’t here to roll his eyes at the girl again. He had a hard time believing in librarians with a vengeance and he’d at least seen what else Night Vale had to offer last night. To be honest, he wasn’t sure it was really up his alley. Knives and automatic weapons aside, Bucky hadn’t felt up to fighting since before he’d broken the Hydra brain washing. He didn’t like the living feeling of a warm gun, didn’t like the wet sound of a blade running into its foe. And he hadn’t had to dream of it all last night, which was refreshing.

Darcy looked back at him over her shoulder and bit her lip. “Alternatively, you can ride with Jane to go see some Science! I think she’s studying the physics of spaces exceeding their constructed limits with Carlos and his team today, so that should be cool. I make the Library trip all the time.”

She was giving him an out and doing a nice job of not letting it sound like pity. He appreciated it, really. He considered it too. There was just one thing bothering him. The thought of Darcy Lewis up against ‘blood thirsty old women.’

“I never been to a library before,” Bucky teased, shrugging. “Could be interesting.”

Darcy grinned again, the little gap in the top row of her smile making his ears warm.

“Great,” she said. “Let me just grab my Falchion and then you and I will be all set to party, handsome.”

Bucky almost fell over. There was a time, a very very long time ago, when he had an answer ready to a pretty girl calling him ‘handsome.’ If that were still the case it was definitely derailed by the thought of Darcy carrying around an old fashioned sword that was probably as tall as her waist. He hadn’t recovered by the time she’d run back down the stairs, sporting nearly three feet of weathered blade - Jesus, it really looked like she’d _used_ the thing - strapped across her back and a tote bag reading “I LIKE BIG BOOKS and I cannot lie.”

“Should I bring more weapons?” Bucky asked, spying a dark stain on the curved edge of Darcy’s blade.

She smiled. “Nah, you’re just back up. I’ve got this covered, honestly.”

He followed her out the door and onto the street.

“Later, Jane-Jane,” Darcy called to the driveway. “I’m taking Sergeant Hot Pants with me!”

There was the sound of something metallic hitting the gravel and then Jane appeared at the end of the drive, squinting at the pair of them.

“Umm… okay but be careful,” Jane warned. “Steve’d kill us if we let him get hurt.”

Bucky wanted to protest, but Darcy grabbed his hand - shit, his metal hand - and pulled him along behind her. He shook her off after they passed a few houses. In the daylight, and in the neighborhood, Night Vale seemed like a pretty typical small town. Dry yards with a few scrappy bushes and the occasional wind chime. A few dogs that barked behind fences, looking happier to see Darcy than concerned with guarding their territory.

“People won’t notice you carrying around that sword?” Bucky asked, glancing down at the girl at his side.

Darcy hummed and lifted her hair up off her shoulders, piling it atop her head again and snapping it in place with an elastic. The back of her neck was dewy and flushed.

“They’ll notice,” Darcy said finally. “But it’s not that out of place here. Especially not for where we’re going.”

Bucky mused over this while they walked. Cars passed and a few people waved, Darcy waving back. And yeah, no one looked too concerned by the sword.

“Why do you think Steve was so…”

Darcy didn’t need him to finish. “Some people just don’t see Night Vale very clearly. They don’t _want_ to see a place like this.” She crossed a street and Bucky followed, until she paused at the corner and turned to him, frowning, eyes tight. “Umm. Look, you don’t have to take this seriously but my advice is… don’t try to make him see it clearly. It’s not always… easy for others.”

“It’s easy for you?”

She shrugged and started moving again. “I like it here. I think it’s fun.”

“How’d you even end up here?”

“Uhhh…wefelloutofthespaceportal,” Darcy said in a rush. “It was kind of my fault. We ended up nearby, in Radon Canyon. Carlos and his crew found us. And Thor went kind of bonkers looking for us. I guess it took him three months, but for us it was about a week. Anyway, by the time he and Heimdall sorted out how to get here, Jane and I were pretty attached. She wants to understand everything, figure out why Night Vale exists, and how, and _where_.”

“And you?” Bucky prompted.

She stopped them on the sidewalk and Bucky looked up from her to see they were standing in front of an imposing, gray stone building. The windows were covered, some boarded over from inside, some painted black, some covered in heavy sun bleached curtains stained in dark patches. The wide, majestically designed entrance was bolted shut with steel sheeting and framed by a sooty blast mark. There were large chunks of cement missing from the stairs, and one very ominous child sized sneaker without its owner.

“Like I said, I like it here,” Darcy said.

Bucky turned back to her and she was grinning again. Girlish. Gap-toothed. Terrifying.

He had a sudden urge to kiss her - and Jesus, had it been a long time since he’d felt that.

“It looks closed,” he said instead.

Darcy laughed and edged around the side of the building. “They don’t like to make it too easy.”

Apparently the alternative to ‘easy’ was scaling a perimeter wall that blocked them from the back of the building, and Darcy picking a padlock open with a set of patched together tools that looked like they might have come from a dentist’s office. Bucky could have done it faster. Hell, he could have ripped the lock off with his prosthetic. But he liked watching her tongue wiggle out between her teeth as she scrunched her forehead up in concentration. He wondered what’d she would’ve been like back in his time. Probably too spirited for her own good, and downright dangerous for him. If he’d been smart enough to see past her hips and…

The door opened and the heavy tang of blood and smothering sweetness of mold stole his breath right out of his chest.

“Ugh, yeah,” Darcy agreed, pulling her t-shirt up over her nose. “This is definitely my least favorite entrance.”

Bucky stepped in front of Darcy, shoulders raising and prosthetic whirring.

“Hey. Hey, we’re good, Bucky,” Darcy said, voice honeyed and soft. She ran one hand down the plates of his arm, making them twitch and raise, like a cat’s hackles. “Look it’s … it’s not as bad as it smells, I promise.”

Bucky stared into the dark, stepping one foot forward and letting his eyes adjust to the deep shadows.

“Remember, I do this. Little me. And my sword, but you know. I hardly ever need to use it,” Darcy continued. “Bucky, look at me.”

Bucky looked back at her over his shoulder, warm hand still stroking down the length of his arm. Strangely, the plates seemed to be responding, shifting and settling beneath her touch.

“If this is a bad idea, then I need you to tell me, and for you to chill outside. It’ll take me ten minutes, tops.”

Somehow, in the space of less than a day, he’d forgotten the power this girl put behind an honest expression. He shook to clear his head and a convenient breeze brought in cleaner smells, dust and ozone.

“I’m alright, peach,” he said. His voice was clearing out of a growl but he was pleasantly surprised to see the way her cheeks pinked. “Where we headed?”

“Umm,” she blinked. “Hard Sciences area by way of boiler room with a quick stop by Late Fines. But I should probably lead the way cause it’s a little…twisty.”

By ‘twisty’ Darcy must have meant the labyrinth of stone walls, carved with cries for help that had been crossed through with deep gashes, and rusted pipes that bellowed hot steam out of bolted seams. The light was dim and tinged bloody red, making every trailing discoloration across the floor look like wounded footsteps. Bucky kept his steps as close to Darcy’s as he could without tripping her up. He wanted to be ready to pull her behind him if something jumped out from around a corner.

“It’s usually quiet down here,” Darcy whispered. “But keep an eye out behind us, yeah?”

Under normal circumstances Bucky was pretty confident that nothing and nobody was able to sneak up on him, but he looked back just in case.

It was empty, a blast of steam fogging the floor and curling up like ghostly hands reaching into the darkness.

He inched closer to Darcy.

She brought them out of the maze near a rickety metal staircase that looked like it was held together with wishful thinking and a few loose screws. The space around them was open, pipes climbing up the walls in a senseless tangle of disorganization. Against the far wall was a cage. To be honest, it didn’t look like it was in much better condition than the staircase but that didn’t seem to be any encouragement for its four inhabitants. Painted over the cage on the wall were the words LATE FINES. Darcy was hurrying over, pulling her falchion from her back. Bucky saw the relieved expressions on the dirty faces of the two middle aged women and the elderly man - the fourth inhabitant was a well dressed but dusty skeleton who looked as though he’d been sitting there since the cage was still sturdy.

Darcy knelt by the cage door with her hodge-podge lock-pickers kit and Bucky shook his head.

“Wait,” he hissed, catching Darcy’s attention over a loud rattle in the pipes. “That’ll take too long.”

He joined her at the cage door and braced his metal hand against the locking, waited for another set of rattles overhead, and pulled. The lock, brittle enough already, fell to the floor in pieces and the door swung open with a squeal.

“Ooo shiny,” Darcy said, still kneeling and eyeing his hand with a look that he’d once associated with kissing dames dizzy.

“Thanks, Darcy,” one of the women said, squeezing out between them and smiling in spite of the nasty black-eye she was sporting. “See you next month!”

Darcy rolled her eyes a little and stood. “Yeah, see you, Esther.” She turned back to Bucky and nudged her head to the stairs. “Come on. They know the way out.”

The metal creaked and swayed beneath them as they climbed. Darcy seemed to be under the impression if she went up fast enough they wouldn’t collapse beneath her so Bucky kept close and practically stood on top of her as she opened the door and something ‘ting’ed against the floor.

“We might need to find another way out,” Bucky suggested as the stairs groaned in relief behind them.

Darcy’s back was pressed to his front, looping strands of her haphazard bun tickling his nose. She held her falchion out in front of her, knees bent softly. Bucky’s brain translated that in combination with her held breath and realized that she was preparing for battle. She nodded shallowly while scanning the rows of heavy wooden shelves that stood twice as tall as them and stretched into shadows that flickered under buzzing yellow lamps that sputtered and spit light in random tempos.

Bucky reached for the hunting knife at his left hip and the handgun at his back.

“This way,” Darcy whispered and headed right.

The aisles were narrow, and Bucky walked sideways behind her, watching behind them, trying to peer over rows of books. Darkness closed in on them at odd intervals, no single lamp seeming to put in more than a few seconds effort before giving up again. Darcy weaved slowly through the shelves checking around corners with cautious eyes. As they moved deeper into the room Bucky could hear a faint chorus of clicks and rustles, almost innocent in nature aside from the way they seemed to make Darcy’s heart beat harder.

“Here,” Darcy breathed, stopping in the center of an aisle. She stood on her tip toes and ran the tip of her finger over the bindings of the books. Bucky shifted in place, watching every corner around them.

“Got it.” She had pulled down three thick texts with leather bindings and carried them in cradled in one arm. “Now to the Front Desk.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “I thought we were avoiding the Librarians?”

Darcy’s answering smile was sheepish and nervous. “We were avoiding unnecessary altercations. But I have to check the books out. I can’t just _take_ them.”

The route to the front desk was more direct. As they passed the ‘Romance’ section, Bucky saw his first Librarian. A little old woman in a floral house dress and sturdy brown shoes, socks sagging feebly down pale and wrinkled legs as she bent over to lift a stack of books from a metal wheeled cart. She looked up as they passed, light catching on the lenses of her bifocals. Bucky smiled reflexively, and suddenly wondered if maybe Darcy _wasn’t_ just a little bit crazy. She looked like the biddies that lived down the hall from his ma and had knit him wool socks as a kid. Then the lights flickered and the little old woman’s eyes glowed a toxic yellow. When the lights came back up she was smiling back.

Her teeth were filed down into fangs.

“Shit,” Darcy sighed, and picked up her pace.

Bucky’s footsteps stuttered behind her as he hurried away from the paperbacks with bucolic swirls of font on their spines. Right. Bloodthirsty old women. That was a thing that was real.

“Is she following us?” Darcy asked, voice a note too high.

Behind him, a wheel squeaked in approach.

“Do we run?” he asked.

“No! No. Do not run. Just… just keep an eye on her.”

They broke out of the rows of shelves at a pace that could probably be politely termed a ‘speed walk’ if not an outright jog. As Darcy bolted towards what looked more like a Judge’s bench than a librarian’s desk Bucky scanned the edges of the room and counted another five bird-boned women with white curls and eyes that gleamed. One had two revolvers hanging from her hips, like a cowboy in an old western. Another was dragging a baseball bat speared with long nails.

“Darcy Lewis,” Darcy gasped at the front desk, resting the books carefully on the counter and setting down a laminated card atop them.

The woman across the desk was sharpening two knitting needles against a black stone.

Bucky backed his way up to Darcy, gun out and knife gripped tight in his fist. He took a deep breath and pulled in every scrap of information he could see around the room.

Somewhere in the middle of the breath, he realized that he felt…like himself. Not the Asset.

On the field with the Avengers he shifted in and out of control of the Winter Soldier - aware of his mission and his ‘allies’ but not of his own fears and discomforts and choices.

With his back to Darcy, surrounded by nightmarish Librarians in a scene out of a badly written horror movie…he felt like James Barnes. He felt like Bucky. Apparently, in all his Hydra conditioning, Killer Grandmother with Fangs for Teeth didn’t register as a ‘threat’ for the Winter Soldier.

“Miss Lewis,” the front desk Librarian spoke with a reptilian lisp. “There is a note on your account stating that one of our books came back with damage to its binding.”

“What?” Darcy gasped. The hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck stood on end. “No. No, that’s not- I’m always very careful.”

“We are Librarians, Miss Lewis. We keep excellent records,” the old woman rasped, as the others crowded closer.

Bucky clicked the safety off his gun and Darcy automatically reached a gentle hand back to stay him.

“Look, Baba Yaga,” Darcy snarled, with just a hint of nerves. “I’m checking these books out and bringing them back in mint condition just like I do every time and if you’ve got a problem with that BUCKY RUN AND FIND US A WAY OUT. GO! GO! GO!”

Darcy was gripping his arm as he ran, her nails digging in. He shoved a growling elderly woman to the floor with his metal shoulder and Darcy swung her falchion out, knocking aside a dense wooden staff.

Bucky raced them to the edge of the room, sheathing his knife and tucking the gun away with it’s safety back on. He called behind him, “Hang on to me, Peach!”

He broke a tall set of painted-over windows with one smash of his arm as Darcy sheathed her sword and jumped onto his back. Sunlight and heat poured into the open room behind them, setting off animal screams of anger from the Librarians. Bucky jumped from the window sill and landed in the dusty lawn at a sprawl, his prosthetic digging into the earth and his feet wobbling for a moment before catching their balance.

Darcy let out an ‘oof’ as she smacked against him in momentum before jumping off his back and taking off at a run.

“They have projectiles!! Come, on! Bucky, come on!”

It took him a moment to pull his hand out of the ground, and a flaming arrow landed inches away. He freed himself and chased after Darcy, watching her bag - full of books - beat against her hip as she ‘whoop’ed and swung her sword around her head. Halfway down the block he realized he was laughing.

 

* * *

 

Darcy’s face was outlined in the red firelight as Bucky hauled the cooler out of the van to where she and Jane had set up a cooking fire. They’d driven out to the Scrublands as the sun set. It was a slightly more habitable desert climate than the Sand Wastes where he’d been dropped off the day before. Jane liked to make notes of the star patterns from here, Darcy explained. It was the best view that was unencumbered by any ‘blinking lights’ that might be confused for stars.

It was cold again, and Jane had lent him one of Thor’s ‘Midgardian garments’. A flannel. He was swimming in it.

Darcy patted the lawn chair next to her as he set the cooler down behind her. Jane was father out, notebook in hand as she stared up at the gradual brightening of the stars.

“Beer?”

“Mm, please,” Darcy answered.

She leant forward and nudged logs around with a heavy stick, her hair sliding across her back in an inky streak that shimmered the same deep purple of the sky.

Bucky took a beer for himself and opened hers with a snag of his metal thumb while she wasn’t looking. She smiled at the fire like she knew what he’d done.

“Thanks,” she murmured, taking the bottle from him. Out of the cooler she dug three foil packets that she’d stuffed with pork shoulder and fresh peppers and potatoes and corn. She set them into the warm bed of the fire with a pair of tongs.

Bucky relaxed into the mesh of lawn chair and stretched his boots toward the fire. He tried to keep his gaze on the fire, or off in the distance, but his eyes invariably returned to watching Darcy who seemed to be mesmerized only by the morphing warmth of the fire. Since coming in with Steve Bucky’d reveled in silence which had begun to feel like a luxury. Steve wanted to talk, to ‘catch-up’ although catching Steve up on the last seventy years was the last thing he wanted to do. Sam wanted to talk, to ‘check-in.’ Hell, even Natalia wanted to talk, which had never been a major part of their history. So he had come to appreciate those minutes he could gather in a day where talking was set aside and he could simply rest.

Now, though. Now he wanted to fill up silence with the sound of Darcy’s voice.

“Do you…come out here often?” he managed, feeling rusty.

Darcy smiled and leaned back, swigging from the bottle and meeting his eyes.

“Not too often,” she said. “Mostly because repetitive behavior makes the shadowy government organization who runs things around here kind of nervous, and we try to fly under the radar. But once every couple weeks doesn’t seem to bother anyone so, yeah. I make dinner, get a fire going, let Jane star gaze to her hearts content.”

“She’s tracking them?”

“No, that’s the best part.” Darcy’s eyes widened in delight as she leaned to him. “There’s nothing to track. The stars are different every night. There’s no pattern. Just a new sky to see. It’s Jane’s kryptonite.”

“Huh.”

“You didn’t sleep last night, right?” She asked, a note of wistfulness.

“No,” he said. “Is that normal?”

Darcy nodded. “Yeah…I’ve never slept here. You get used to it, to not dreaming.”

“I don’t mind not dreaming,” he said, without thinking.

She blinked and then turned to nod at the fire. “I make up my own dreams,” she said. “Jane runs equations in her head, makes up new theories. It looks about the same on her as sleep. But sometimes it’s nice to not pretend and just come out here to stay all night. Will you mind? I can take you back.”

“No, I like it here,” he said.

The took sips of their beer together and settled back into silence until Darcy perked up with a long story taking off into the Whispering Forests for a ‘camping weekend’ with Jane where they tried looking for the source of the voices. It set Bucky laughing until the food was ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> COME HERE ALL OF YOU AND LET ME SMUSH YOU TO MY BOSOM.  
> It's so good to have people reading this story who love it's oddness. And it's so so nice to hear from you cause I was definitely nervous.  
> Feel free to come join me on queenspuppetwriting.tumblr.com where I post Night Vale fan art that reminds me of this story alongside pictures of hot actors who are pretty to look at. Also, I love love love talking with people.  
> I hope you liked this chapter in all it's fangsome glory.


	3. New York, I Love You but You're Freaking Me Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, YOU. Bless you. 
> 
> Much thanks to JanetSnakehole, my queen beta who saves me.
> 
> Chapter title taken from New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down by LCD Soundsystem

Bucky spent his second day in Night Vale sans-Steve watching Darcy alternately feed and redirect absent minded scientists in the local ‘lab’ - which really seemed to be an old office building with a lot of repurposed computers and household appliances. Jane was the center of attention, garbed in a oily apron and safety goggles, while she patched together what Darcy loosely explained would be a first alert system for ‘weird.’

The team of pale, nervous, but generally pretty friendly scientists held their breath as Jane finished connecting the last bit of wiring. Darcy munched on popcorn. The screens flared to life as Jane plugged her monitors into a surge protector, engines whirred and a little yellow light blinked urgently as the speakers whistled.

“It’s alive,” Darcy wailed out, throwing popcorn into the air. “IT’S ALIVE!!”

The scientists snickered and patted Jane on the back.

 

On the third Steve-free day Darcy escorted Bucky around Night Vale in a golf cart she’d ‘borrowed’ from the tourism board. They stopped at the Kwik-E for slushies. Darcy got ‘All Your Hopes And Wishes Have Been Forgotten’ which was a melancholy shade of periwinkle and smelled like a pineapple upside-down cake. Bucky got ‘The Eve Of An On-Coming Storm.’ It was inky black but tasted of lemons and cucumber and mint. He actually really liked it.

They spent the day tailing the Sheriff’s Secret Police and were asked, repeatedly, to please stop.

 

On the fourth morning Bucky rolled over in his bunk and sat up sharply, smacking his forehead against the ceiling twice while he tried to keep his eye on the figure standing in his room. It was an old woman with a graceful sweep of gray hair pulled back and a smooth and entirely featureless face - no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Her arms were crossed in her matronly gray dress. He couldn’t be sure where she was looking, but he felt very judged.

“DARCY,” he called, willing to sound panicked.

His heart was beating wildly in his chest and his human hand was under the blanket, gripped around his gun.

Darcy’s feet beat down the hall and she skidded into the room, immediately locking on to the problem.

“Oh…right,” she said, nodding. “Did we not mention her?”

“She…” Bucky trailed off, not sure where he was headed. She was faceless. She was in his room. She was a previously unmentioned old woman in the house who did not have a face and was in his room.

“She lives here,” Darcy said watching the old woman who was still not-staring at Bucky. “Or exists here. I’m not clear on the terminology.”

She shrugged and turned to Bucky, her eyes widening as took him in. “Holy shit, you are cut.”

Bucky blinked and Darcy looked up at him, face open and sincere. “Do you want to make out?” she asked.

“In front of her?” Bucky asked. It was both the right and wrong answer to Darcy’s question and Bucky could feel himself turning red while he struggled with a combination of embarrassment, frustration, and delight.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. No. That would be weird,” Darcy said, glancing over her shoulder and then shaking her head. “Come downstairs.”

To make out, Bucky wondered.

“There’s coffee,” Darcy added.

 

Bucky was with the Angels in the afternoon. They were sitting on lawn chairs out in the backyard, their wings arranged over the arms to brush against the ground. An old dial radio sat on a side table inside their circle of seats, playing a Brooklyn Dodgers game that Bucky had missed after his fall.

“Can’t believe they moved to California,” Bucky grumbled at the end of the second inning, swigging from his beer.

The Angel, Erika - they were all Erika - sitting closest to Bucky’s left side puffed air from it’s….somewhere - maybe a set of eyes? - in agreement.

These guys - genderless, yes, he got it - weren’t so strange, really. And they knew their baseball. Bucky could appreciate this on a deep level.

“Hey,” Darcy said, coming out from the kitchen, cell phone in her hand and fallen expression on her face.

Bucky sat up straight and Darcy came to lean against his shoulder. The metal one, of course. Bucky wondered if she gravitated to it to prove something or if she just genuinely didn’t see the difference, the way she didn’t seem to see the wrongness of Night Vale.

“It’s Steve,” she said, holding out the cell phone and trying to straighten out her frown.

Bucky knew it before he even held up the phone to his ear, heard the sounds of gunfire and bodies colliding, and said, “Hey, punk.”

His vacation was over early.

* * *

 

“How was it?” Steve asked as Bucky landed. He lifted up his shield and Bucky shoved the Hydra agent between them with his prosthetic, knocking them unconscious against the bright star.

He reached back to unzip his go-bag just enough to pull a gun out, thinking of Darcy’s laughing face as she ran away from the library.

“Fun,” he grunted, shooting into the distance and taking out one of the men trying to pile on Natalia.

“Sorry I missed it,” Steve said, slamming his shield into the jugular of the agent trying to sneak up behind him.

Bucky wasn’t sure Steve even realized that he was lying. Steve didn’t miss the desert stars, or tooling around and bumping his knees into the dashboard of a golf cart, or listening to Darcy tell crazy stories by the fire. Steve was a fighter, no matter how badly he wanted to deny that. He loved bullies. They gave him something to throw himself against.

“Back to work,” Bucky said, and focused on remembering which side he was fighting for.

* * *

 

After flushing out another Hydra cell in Georgia, and then assisting the X-Men on an international mutant incident in Spain, and then scuffling with _another_ Hydra pocket in in Dubai, Bucky was as much worn out by the traveling as he was by the fighting.

He fell asleep on the quinjet after his first five minutes alone.

He woke an hour later, with a snarl and two quick slashes of metal - one a fist and the other a knife in his flesh hand - the feeling of ice crisp on his skin, electricity buzzing through his bones.

“Whoa, buddy, whoa.” The voice was low, gentle, a few yards away and just familiar enough to remind him to breathe, to exhale.

“Not a goddamn farm animal, Barton,” Bucky growled, slamming his eyes shut and dropping the knife to clatter against the floor. The smell of blood in his nose could just as easily have been his own from a recent injury as the memories that pressed in while he slept.

“Just thought I’d come wake you up before Roger’s tried to do it with a kiss,” Clint said, leaning against the doorway.

The Asset wasn’t fooled and Clint Barton wasn’t relaxed. But Bucky could be grateful for a little extra vigilance in his direction.

“Punk already tried it,” Bucky joked, voice rough - had he been screaming in his sleep again or was it the weeks worth of smoke and debris? “Gotta mouth full of metal for his efforts.”

Bucky sat up and rolled his shoulders back, opening his eyes in time to catch Clint’s smirk.

“Missing your vacation yet?” Clint asked, eyes sharp.

No amount of kevlar could have protected him from that shot. Bucky flinched and appreciated more fully Clint’s reputation as a marksman.

“As a matter of fact…” he drifted off with a shrug.

Clint smiled, grim and satisfied. “Night Vale’s just a space portal away. I’m sure you’ll make it back soon enough.”

“I’m going to tell Natalia you’re trying to get rid of me,” Bucky said.

Clint rolled his eyes and turned back. “Don’t act like she won’t sympathize with me.”

* * *

 

Whatever hopes he might have harbored for another handful of days in the quaintly dangerous little desert town were steam rolled by the following three months of shots fired and hastily bandaged injuries. By the time a break from battle arrived he’d started to lose track of the meaning of the word ‘rest’ again.

They landed in the city to stay in Stark’s tower and he felt he would have prefered the building up north, where there were fewer unfamiliar people passing through. Spent a couple days finding shadows to blend into. Found himself wondering why he was left to be idle. Forgot to eat and sleep and wash himself until the Captain made the suggestions.

The shower helped a little.

Washing off the blood that dripped into his boots and dried in the creases between his toes. Rinsing away the stench of smoke twined around every hair. Shaving off the patchy beard and stubborn road grit.

He forced himself to meet his own eyes in the mirror.

His name was James Barnes, but he let people call him ‘Bucky.’

It was good that he could remember.

Stark gave the prosthetic a tune up and invited him to a party.

* * *

 

 

Bucky wasn’t stupid, he knew it wasn’t Stark’s offer of ‘all you can eat caviar and cocktail sausages’ that made him shake off enough of the lingering Winter Soldier to put on some decent clothes and comb his hair out of his eyes. He just thought it might be nice to catch up with her again, see how the Angels were doing, find out if she’d ever gotten out of that Library violation.

Cause Stark had said ‘Thor’s coming too so you’ll have someone to drunk arm wrestle with who won’t just let you win. He’s picking up his lady love from that shit hole on his way over.”

And Bucky had just thought…maybe. Maybe Darcy would come too.

Tony’s once again newly-renovated living room slash open bar slash arcade - third time’s the charm, right? - was crowded floor boards to rafters with every Avenger and affiliate whose file the Winter Soldier had studied when he first came in and itched for a mission. Thor was easy enough to find, always the loudest and largest point in the room. And there was Jane next to him, petite but with presence, eyes narrowed in fond exasperation. And around them were…Rhodey, Pepper, and the two young SHIELD scientists who were so attached at the hip that their names were too.

Bucky scanned the room, absently trailing behind Steve on his way to Sam at the bar. The room felt muddled with people and the pieces of Darcy he was calling to mind were her lips in a sly smile and the curve of her waist. He thought maybe he’d gotten his hopes up. Tony hadn’t said anything about her coming and she wasn’t really an Avenger or an affiliate. An affiliate’s affiliate?

“Hey, handsome.” Her voice was quiet, shy.

Bucky almost tripped. Darcy was sitting on a barstool a few steps back, twisting in her seat to smile thinly at him. She was wearing some sort of floaty cotton dress that reminded him of women’s night gowns, and a long and overly large sweater that he immediately wanted to remove and hide away.

“Hey, Peach,” he said. His voice was a rasp, unpolished and abused from too many nights of trying not to sleep and failing.

Her cheeks pinked, and the room around them focused into sharper color.

“You look like shit,” she said.

Bucky grinned, left Steve to charm the room on his own, and stepped in closer to Darcy. The crowd around them was distracting and Tony’s decor was worse. He knew he was off his game already if he’d missed seeing Darcy as he passed her.

“Sounds about right,” he answered, shrugging. “I need another vacation.”

Darcy propped her arm up on the bar and leaned her head against her fist, studying him. “Right,” she said. “Nothing so restful as a town made up of supernatural disasters.”

“Well when you put it like that it doesn’t sound so different than these parts, lately,” Bucky mused.

Darcy snorted and shook her head, ruffling her hair.

Bucky was trying to put a finger on what was different about seeing her here. She was a little paler, looked a little more tired and a little more bored.

“What about you? Still terrorizing harmless Librarians?” he asked.

She grinned, brightened and sat up a little straighter. “You know it. I go more than ever. Someone’s gotta let Esther out of Late Fines.”

There was a flash of red out of the corner of his eye and Bucky caught Natalia eyeing them both with interest.

“You can go on,” Darcy said softly and Bucky turned back to find her wilting, pulling back in on herself. “Can’t miss your team party.”

“Came to see you.”

It wasn’t quite a shot in the dark, he knew, but he was less sure of himself nowadays and blunt honesty had always made him a little nervous.

He was rewarded with Darcy blooming in front of him, grin spreading and eyes widening.

“How long I been away? It’s a few months for me, but I know it’s different for you,” Bucky said.

“A little over a month.” She was still brightening, the color of her eyes growing deeper.

“See, I missed you more,” he said, feeling like he was getting his footing at this again.

“Ohhh, you’re cute,” Darcy said, eyes narrowing even as she blushed harder.

“I thought that was pretty good,” he admitted. “You wanna step outside? Tony brags about his balcony a lot.”

“Tony brags a lot,” Darcy corrected, hopping off her stool, her skirt dancing above her knees as it settled.

Bucky led her through the crowd, his hand at her back, while the two gossipy old hens - Natalia and Clint - watched them with thinly disguised amusement.

New York in late summer was just as hot as Night Vale and a hundred times as muggy so the balcony was cleared of company. Darcy pulled her sweater off immediately and threw it over the back of a lounge chair. Bucky resisted the urge to throw it over the edge of the building while she wasn’t looking, grateful to be introduced to the curves of her exposed shoulder blades.

“God, I always forget how this city smells,” Darcy said, wrinkling her nose. “Is it a lot different than when you grew up here?”

“The smell?”

Darcy leaned against the railing and hip checked him lightly.

“Yeah,” he said, trying not to sound too wistful. “What I remember, anyways.”

He could feel her stare against his skin for a long moment, a warm prickling he wanted to press against like a cat.

“I don’t remember much from when I was little,” she said. “A few things, a few places, certain people, a handful of stressful events. Sometimes I sit myself down and dig around, try to pull some of it back and write it down. Other times things just pop back up uninvited. But really, at least half of what happened then is already completely lost. Memory is a very strange thing.”

It wasn’t the same, he knew that, but that wasn’t what Darcy was trying to tell him so he didn’t point it out.

“I keep forgetting my…my baseline,” he said. “Forget I have a name, forget what foods I like…” This was rough territory and she was studying the skyline and listening patiently so he let himself trail off. “I got some of that back while I stayed in Night Vale. Felt like myself. Unpolluted.”

“Night Vale is like that,” Darcy said.

Bucky studied her in profile, outlined with skyscrapers and billboards and too much noise and realized what was wrong. He missed the white space of the desert around her, had gotten used to her being the only thing in focus - the sharpest and most vivid detail in a hot and hazy watercolor. She was beautiful here - that was not in question - but she was blending in a little too well, falling back into the background as if that was the space carved out for her. And maybe the room full of geniuses and super powers thought so too.

Which was bullshit.

“I’d like to go back,” he said.

The corner of her mouth curled up softly and they both sighed. A moment later her shoulders perked back and her eyes darted from side to side. She grinned and Bucky felt a twitch of undefined excitement run up his spine.

“How fast can you grab a bag and meet me on the roof?” Darcy asked.

Bucky blinked. It took him longer than he cared to admit to catch up.

“Give me ten minutes, Peach.”

“I’ll tell Jane we’re leaving. See you up there.”

* * *

 

No offense to Steve - really, Steve was his brother, he’d brought Bucky back from the abyss of the Winter Soldier, he loved the guy - but Bucky’s second trip to Night Vale was infinitely more pleasant. Having Darcy cuddled up to his side, face tucked under his chin for minutes on end? Personal highlight.

The landing was…more eventful.

“Shiiiiiiit,” Darcy hissed, after finding themselves on Main street, a solemn march of children parting like water around them as they proceeded up the street in even rows. “You graduated, right?”

It was still early morning and the sidewalk was lined with tearful adults, waving handkerchiefs. He remembered the girls who stood at the docks, waving off the boats of soldiers. Darcy nudged him and twined her arm around his prosthetic.

“Uhhh…” He’d gotten out of school as soon as he was old enough for the docks to take him, and his ma’ had nearly tanned his hide for it too.

“Shit,” Darcy muttered.

“It wasn’t that common back then,” Bucky protested.

“It’s the first day of school!” Darcy said, pulling him by his metal elbow through the grave parade of well dressed children who looked like they were walking to their own funerals. “We’ve got to get out of here before the School Board tries to re-enroll you!”

Bucky had one moment of adjustment where he wondered how eligible he could really look before he remembered where they were and hustled behind Darcy. The sky overhead - partly cloudy and dull - turned pink as if dawn had decided to start over for the day and Darcy started muttering.

“Peach?” Bucky asked.

“Move, move, move,” Darcy growled at the passing children.

The clouds deepened to a fluorescent purple that shaded everything in sight and goosebumps rose up Darcy’s arm.

“God it’s like trying to swim up stream in a salmon run,” Darcy panted, worming her way between two pre-teens and their roller packs. “Wear a backpack, duders!”

“Our mom has concerns about scoliosis,” one of the kids answered.

“Oh good, now I feel bad,” Darcy sighed.

_ALL HAIL THE SCHOOL BOARD, MORTALS_

The voice, uniform and painfully loud, reverberated through Bucky’s mind and he flinched, checking over his shoulder for it’s source.

Overhead the sky parted to reveal one incandescent, fluffy, and color-shifting - into a violent shade of lime - cloud.

_ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD_

“Bucky, run to the house,” Darcy murmured.

“Sticking with you, Peach,” Bucky answered in a whisper. He stumbled along at Darcy’s urging, but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the cloud that was gradually descending from the sky to the street as it gently morphed to an electric blue.

_RAISE YOUR WORTHLESS EDUCATION CERTIFICATES, MORTALS_

“Fine, run _with me_ then,” Darcy huffed.

Bucky gave in and turned away from the Glow Cloud and ran, pulling his arm just far enough from Darcy to catch her hand in his.

_ALL UNCERTIFIED ADULTS WILL NOW REPORT TO THE SCHOOL BOARD AND PRESS THEIR WEAKENED BODIES TO THE HOLLOW GROUND IN SUPPLICATION_

“Is the house far enough away?” Bucky asked, almost panting.

“Trust me,” Darcy answered, definitely panting.

“Goes without saying,” Bucky said. He was pleased, in spite of being chased by a telepathic rainbow cloud, by the smile that spread across her face.

_HALT, MORTALS_

“SUCK IT, COTTON CANDY,” Darcy bellowed.

By the time they’d made it to the neighborhood Darcy really was out of breath and Bucky was half-tempted to show off by lifting her up in his arms, but the Glow Cloud was still hovering at the same menacing near-distance. And he didn’t want to offend her.

“Is it raining?” Bucky asked, squinting at the dark shapes that were falling out of from under the peachy-orange iridescence.

“Dead animals. Super gross,” Darcy gasped. They sprinted up the block and she added, “Ground-hatch behind the garage.”

As soon as they got up the driveway, and thankfully out of sight of the Glow Cloud, Bucky flipped open the metal doors that leaned towards the rear of the garage and Darcy lowered herself down a set of narrow steps. Bucky jumped down into the open darkness behind her and she slammed the doors shut. He landed after a short fall and listened to Darcy’s heaving breaths and the metallic ‘snick’ of a lock sliding in place.

“You good, handsome?” Darcy huffed.

“Yeah.” He’d landed in a crouch on what felt like rough carpeting over cement. The air was cool and damp and their voices bounced off near walls. He could hear Darcy shuffling on the stairs and then her face glowed in pale blue, lit up from her phone screen.

“Give me a minute, I know we’ve got candles down here,” she said.

Bucky shrugged his bag off his back and sat down on the carpeting watching Darcy’s face float through the black around them. “Is this a cellar?” he asked.

“Noooo,” Darcy said, pulling a box that off a shelf and setting it down on the floor between them, it rattled with glass. “You don’t want to know what’s in the cellar. This is our underground bunker. Pretty much everyone has one. You know, because of reasons.”

“Night Vale reasons,” he said, nodding along as Darcy dug a lighter out of her purse and set to work.

“Here we go.”

One candle at a time the room opened up, walls covered in whiteboards with old notes - from Jane - and inappropriate stick drawings - definitely Darcy. There was a full sized futon folded out into a hastily made bed along the far narrow wall and a collection of mismatched low tables and shelves lined with books, board games and notebooks. Two large pillow like sacks spread out over the floor in front of a large dial radio. Darcy flipped on a small dim lamp, like an oddly shaped bottle filled with red gunk and yellow liquid.

“Lava lamp,” Darcy explained, catching his confused expression. “Come on, try the bean bags.”

She flopped down on to one of the pillow sacks, which crackled with noise and puffed up around her like a chair. Bucky copied her, somewhat less enthusiastically.

“What do you think?” she asked, sweeping her arm around her.

“Nicest underground bunker I’ve ever stayed in,” Bucky said honestly.

* * *

 

Darcy said he’d be safe to go back topside after midnight but the Glow Cloud would keep looking to charge him with ‘truancy’ until then. So they ordered Rico’s pizza for delivery - twice, because she underestimated how much he could eat - and played board games and cards and listened to the local radio all day. Darcy gave Bucky the full story of how she’d ended up with Jane and meeting Thor and Bucky told her three of his favorite memories of growing up in Brooklyn with Steve. He remembered four more but saved them to tell to Steve when he got back. It was hard to keep track of time underground, and harder when he couldn’t judge based on his own exhaustion which had faded from ‘battling sleep’ to ‘battling the urge to curl up with his head in Darcy’s lap.’

Sometime after their second meal of stuffed breadsticks and pizza, he lost the second battle. Darcy was sitting against the wall, her legs stretched out along one end of the futon and when he’d climbed up to mimic her position she rested her hands on his shoulders and pulled him down to lay against her. Her fingertips dipped into his hair, nails scratching gently at his scalp and melting away all his protests. His eyelids flickered in some struggle for personal dignity before falling shut.

“This is one of my best moves,” Darcy said, tilting his head so his cheek rested against her thigh and running her nails behind his ear and down to the nape of his neck.

Only half-understanding her boast Bucky made an embarrassing sound between and groan and a purr. He swallowed before his mouth could fall open and he drooled on her pretty dress. There was something very pleasing about the thought that Darcy could carry on like this all night and he’d never fall asleep and miss a second of it. Although he could think of a few ways he could return the favor before the sun rose. He shifted, pulling a leg up and hoping it helped hide his response to her simple touch.

“Peach?”

“Hm?”

The words were falling out of his mouth without prior consultation with his brain. “Do you miss your… intern?”

Shit.

Shit shit.

Darcy’s fingers paused in their study of the cowlick at the crown of his head before resuming again. “Yes?” she said, voice tilting at the end of the word.

He forced his body to stay relaxed in her lap.

“I mean, yes,” she said, more certain. “But not in the way you probably mean. Ian and I weren’t really… we didn’t…we sucked at dating each other, basically.”

Since Bucky couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t boil down to ‘must have been his fault ‘cause you’re perfect’ so he kept his mouth shut and let her gather her thoughts.

“Ian was…Jane was his hero. And Jane is my hero. We kept ending up in life threatening situations and…” She let the rest fall unsaid, but he was familiar with the symptoms of adrenaline and could understand what was left in the blank space. “But,” she continued, “you know, he was terrified of Night Vale. Fascinated. But terrified. He said it was all his worst nightmares boiled down into one town. And I… these aren’t my worst nightmares. They’re just adventures.

“I don’t know why he went into the Dog Park,” she whispered. “It’s like, rule number one. I sometimes wonder if I should have told him to go home, I kept telling him he’d grow into it and then he… Of course, he was being chased by a pack of flaming hell hounds, so maybe it didn’t have anything to do with me, after all.”

“Don’t think it coulda been, Darcy,” Bucky mumured, rolling slightly to look up at her. She looked sad, but not heartbroken, and he was probably more pleased by this than one ought to be when speaking of the dimensionally unrecoverable in regards to a person.

“You aren’t scared of Night Vale,” she said, her face hopeful and nervous.

“Nah,” he said, watching her smile flicker back into place. “I feel safe here. Well, not with all that stuff out there,” she snorted, “but, down here, in the quiet with…with you. I’m in peril, but I’m safe. That’s a safe I can learn to trust.”

He reached his hand back - didn’t even think about the fact that it was his prosthetic hand - and twined his fingers with hers. She carried on combing through his hair with her free hand until his eyes fell shut again. Over the radio the reporter’s voice was falling deeper, lulling and gentle. He could feel his whole body going limp against the lumpy mattress as Darcy continued, hypnotized by the swirling patterns of her fingers. It was the closest to sleep he’d ever felt in Night Vale, a rest so heavy he couldn’t even lift his own limbs as Darcy shifted out from under him and curled against his side.

“Goodnight Night Vale,” the radio announcer spoke, tone dark and sweet. “Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've a hankering for more Bucky, more Night Vale, and more general fandomy-ness you can find me at queenspuppetwriting.tumblr.com I post a fair amount of snippets and drabbles there lately too so that's fun.
> 
> Comments are always enormously appreciated and the whole lot of you are wonderfully sweet!!


	4. Even The Warriors Are Always Great At Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY MY LOVES. Come back to me, I missed you terribly.
> 
> Enormous thanks to JanetSnakehole for taking care of this chapter/entire story and making sure it was nice and tidy and fit to be seen. Also big thanks for rlw0810 and katiedid for keeping in touch and helping to make sure I did not vanish altogether.
> 
> Chapter title comes from Keren Ann's Right Now & Right Here and I would put ALL the lyrics in the title because of how adorably sweet they are, but they probably wouldn't fit.

* * *

* * *

 

“Heading out?”

Bucky glanced over his shoulder as he packed a go bag. Steve was leaning in the doorway to his bedroom, bruised nose from sparring with Thor fading back to normal as he waited for Bucky’s answer.

“Just a couple days,” Bucky said. Steve nodded, half smiling. There wasn’t any good way of telling how many days were actually passing in New York while he was in Night Vale, but it was the thought that counted, right?

“So those bagels on the counter weren’t for us?” Steve asked, facing falling open and innocent.

“You eat my girl’s bagels, Rogers?” Bucky growled, zipping shut the bag and strapping it over his shoulders.

“Just two,” Steve answered, grin revealing the poppy seed stuck between his teeth.

Bucky hid his laugh behind an irritated huff and shook his head.

“Tell _your girl_ I say ‘hi’,” Steve said as he passed.

Bucky twitched and froze in step. “I didn’t mean - she’s not…”

“Jesus, Barnes, pretty sure I was better with dames back in the forties.”

“Don’t act like I didn’t watch you trip over your own tongue talkin’ to Wanda at breakfast, Rogers,” Bucky shot back. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Bye, Buck.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey there, Peach,” He said, stepping out of the portal ring.

Darcy’s face lit up, eyes bright over the rim of her sun glasses and face blooming pink around that full smile.

“Oh my god, look at you, Pebbles!” Darcy squealed, jumping off the front nose of the van and launching herself right into his arms. She leaned back and reached up to bop her palm against the little knot of hair he’d managed to pull to the top of his head.

“We’re twins now,” he said. Warmth coiled in his gut as she arched her neck back to laugh, resting her weight back against his palms. Bucky tried for another laugh. “I heard it’s a look for fellas now.”

Darcy snorted and shook her head, tapping it once against his chest.

“Yeah, you’re a real panty dropper, handsome,” Darcy said. She caught his eye and smirked, like she knew how nervous her teasing made him. Flirting had come a long way in almost 75 years and sometimes he felt like Darcy was driving the race-car to his tricycle.

“Come on,” Darcy said, turning and hauling him by the hand to the van. “We need to get back before Jane get’s too hungry and starts chewing on her own leg. Or worse… tries to figure out the grill on her own.”

“You trusted her on her own?” Bucky asked, jumping up into the passenger seat.

“Well, Carlos and the mini-mind team is there too,” Darcy said, bracing both hands on the car door to help launch herself up into the driver’s side.

“Sounds concerning,” Bucky said.

Darcy frowned and thought on that while she waited for the engine to turn over. “I mean, they’re all mostly house broken at this point, I think.”

Bucky laughed and shook his head. “No I meant, concerning that they’re all together. Something going on in town?”

“Oh, you know,” Darcy said with a shrug. “Usual end of the world nonsense, probably.”

Bucky’d been coming to visit Night Vale for most of a year at this point, he figured, give or take a month that was lost in the translation of time. He’d been witness to the sun being blotted out of the sky by an incoming blackened asteroid that spontaneously transformed into a flock of large but otherwise harmless birds- aside from the clean-up necessitated by the droppings. He’d sat through a community picnic that included one of the most shockingly violent egg-and-spoon races he had ever seen and a deeply polarized discussion on public parking fees. He’d even once been caught trespassing on government property near Radon Canyon and… he couldn’t remember how he got out of that one, actually…there was something there at the corner of his thoughts. A man and… a deer skin briefcase?

It didn’t matter.

He took his cues from Darcy and Jane, and they’d never seemed all that concerned.

So when Darcy chugged the van along through town and Bucky looked out the window to see an Erika on every street corner - wings jutting straight out their backs and eyes all focused on the same western corner of town - Bucky just waved in passing and turned back to study Darcy’s profile as she told him about her recent run in with Mayor Dana Cardinal while she’d been collecting data from the house that didn’t really exist.

“We’re sort of frenemies,” Darcy explained, pulling into the driveway. “‘Cause she used to be an intern but now she’s, like…”

“The Mayor?” Bucky suggested.

“Yeah,” Darcy said with sigh. “You get special flying, disappearing, and turning-into-a-horse powers and you just start forgetting about the little people, I guess.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky waited by the bonfire while Darcy took the hot dogs in to the scientists, including Jane’s special plate. (“I just like to watch her face scrunch up when she sees it,” Darcy said, while cutting a hot dog into bite size pieces and painting a smiley face onto the plate with ketchup. “Plus it catches her attention enough to get her to eat.”) Their own attempt at campfire bagel-pizzas were sizzling on the pan, cheese starting to bubble promisingly.

“How’d it go,” he asked, as she came back out of the kitchen into the yard.

She shrugged and curled up against his side on the wicker love seat. It was a new addition to the yard furniture and he was already a big fan.

“She’s all into tracking the,” Darcy waved vaguely at the air around them in explanation, “you know, phenomena. I popped a bite into her mouth while she was talking and she didn’t choke so she’ll probably finish the plate. Perfectly good waste of a ketchup smiley, though.”

“Next time,” he said, in consolation.

Darcy muffled her laugh in his shoulder and the brush of air and her lips over the sleeve of his t-shirt made the hair on the back of his neck stand up in anticipation.

“Food’s done,” she said, glancing over at the fire and pulling away.

_Let it burn_ , he thought but resisted saying aloud. Darcy was more or less at a loss in a kitchen but she managed campfire cooking with a sense of pride not generally associated with bagel pizzas.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she said in the direction of the fire, sounding surprisingly shy. “I missed you.”

“Missed you more,” he said, rewarded with a snort. “How long’s it been?”

“Couple months,” Darcy said, a touch wistful.

He frowned. This was the frustrating part. He’d once spent a nasty month on missions and then come back to Night Vale a handful of days after his last visit. Another time he’d gotten back to the upstate facility and realized he’d left a few weapons in his bunk bed and hopped back landing two weeks later than he’d left.

“Been less than a month for me,” he noted.

“Then _I_ missed _you_ more,” she argued.

“Doubtful, peach,” he said, holding in a sigh as she settled against him again, resting a plate with still bubbling cheesy bagels on their laps.

He caught her up on the Avenger antics, Clint’s collection of recent injuries, Vision’s slow acclimation to corporeality, Steve’s total inability to translate the low key flirting of the on site female agents. Darcy told him about seeing Chet Baker - he tried not to feel jealous when her cheeks pinked - harassing people for buying ‘easy listening jazz’ at Dark Owl Records on Valentine’s Day, and her eighth job offer from Cecil Gershwin Palmer whose local radio show they were both fans of.

“But he goes through interns like tissues in cold season,” Darcy said with a shrug, licking a bit of greasy salt from her fingers. Bucky let his arm fall to her shoulder, his palm soaking up the bright heat from the fire laying over the skin of her arm. He was interrupted from his study of her darting tongue by Jane coming outside to join them.

“Hey, Foster,” he greeted.

“Mmhmm.”

“How goes the science?” Darcy asked.

“Mmhmm.” Jane sat in a lawn chair and scribbled notes in the following silence while they watched her from the love seat.

Darcy’s hand drifted across his thighs to link her fingers with his metal ones and he shifted in his seat trying to cover the sound of cybernetics bursting into nervous energy. Sometimes he felt like his prosthetic responded to Darcy’s touch without any input from him, like it was as fond of her touch in an equal but separate manner as the rest of him.

Jane stood abruptly after a few minutes and wandered back into the house, still scratching away at paper.

Darcy was practically in his lap now, her head tucked under his chin, her ankles linked against his. The fire was starting to peter out and by habit that meant they would go inside soon, Darcy to her bedroom and Bucky to the top bunk in the guest room. He both loved and hated their habits here. But he never seemed to find the right words to break them.

Darcy found them first, because of course she did.

“We’re friends,” Darcy murmured.

“‘Course we are,” Bucky said.

“Are we more than friends?”

He swallowed and Darcy burrowed a little deeper against him. “I think so,” he answered. “That’s what I want.”

“Good,” she said and he sagged a little in relief. “When do you think you’ll get around to kissing me?”

She must have heard his heart stutter, what with her head pressed against his chest, but she didn’t tease him.

“Lift your chin up and I’ll tell you,” he said.

He slouched a little, impatient, and caught her mouth with his, flattered by her immediate, happy hum and the way her hands clutched at the collar of his shirt.

He’d spent a lot time imagining what kissing Darcy might feel like, what she might taste like, the little sounds she’d make, and every bit of the reality was better than his own fabrications. She wasn’t soft, but pliable and strong, pressing against his mouth and pulling his kiss back toward her. There was a ring of salt around her lips, perfect for sipping and licking, like one of those elaborate drinks Tony was always trying to get Steve and him tipsy on. He was tipsy now, his head floating and cheeks warm, hands clumsy against her waist as he tried to pull her closer. She giggled against his teeth and then sighed as he managed to get his palm against her back and her hips twisted over his lap.

Her arms snaked around his neck, hand petting at his metal shoulder where the plates were raising and settling like a dog’s tail wagging. He ran his right hand down her hips, tugging gently against the back pocket of her shorts to press her hips to his, and then traveling down further to stroke and clutch at the soft skin of her thigh. She licked her way into his mouth, pressing her chest against his, and he had the stray thought that he was making this a lot easier for her than dames had for him back in the day. She sucked at the tip of his tongue and his hips jerked against her in reflex, making her pull away.

“Sorry, sorry,” he gasped, chasing her mouth without meaning to.

“No, you’re fine,” she said, muffled by another kiss. Her hands cupped his face to help separate them. “But we should go inside.”

He slumped a little, trying to hide his disappointment and she grinned, toothy and predatory. She nipped at his bottom lip and then again at the tip of his chin.

“We should go inside, to my room, where I put your bags,” she explained, punctuating each thought with a soft kiss and a roll of her hips that made his fingers dig gently against her. “Because Jane might wander out here again, and while I know she would be happy for us, I don’t really want an audience.”

“You put my bags in your room?” Bucky asked, rising off the love seat with Darcy squirming in his arms.

“Yeah, I was pretty confident about how this conversation would go,” Darcy said, trying to wriggle her way to standing on her own and instead making him trip a little at the feel of her against him. “Oh, seriously? Fine, have it your way.” She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and laughed as he wrapped his hands around her ass.

There was a lot to appreciate about a girl from the twenty first century, Bucky decided, as Darcy leaned forward to suck a temporary mark into the skin of his neck.

“Pretty forward of you,” he said.

“If I’m offending your delicate sepia toned sensibilities, I would absolutely understand and you could go back to sleeping in the top bunk of a kids bed,” Darcy offered while trailing her mouth up to nip gently just below his ear.

Bucky grunted and held her closer as he hurried through the kitchen - Jane waved and muttered ‘Good morning’ while writing notes and sipping from her coffee. He was outmatched by the girl in his arms and deeply grateful.

The journey up the stairs was a bit touch and go. Which is to say that Darcy would touch him somewhere, fingertips tracing down his spine for instance, and it would remind him to walk again. When she sucked his bottom lip between hers and fisted both her hands in the short hairs at the back of his neck, making him groan and sway near the top of the stairs, Bucky decided it was time to focus.

He sat Darcy gently down on the landing, kneeling a step below and leaning forward to press his weight against her. He pulled his mouth from hers to blaze a wet trail of tongue and teeth and lips down her throat to the collar of her shirt. He found a spot at the hollow near her left shoulder that was bitter with some artificial fragrance and made her keen and clutch her legs around his hips. He set to work claiming it as his own until she was panting and arching beneath him.

Bucky knew that he only had about half his memories back in hand, but he was absolutely positive that no long lost fling or old sweetheart compared the feel of Darcy wrapped around him.

“Bed, bed,” she chanted.

“Barnes,” he corrected, only half coherent as he stretched and tugged at her shirt collar in a misguided attempt to find more stretches of skin. He added, “Preferably James.”

Darcy snorted and twisted against him. “James Barnes. I have a bed.”

Oh.

“Oh,” he said.

Right.

“Right,” he said.

Darcy grinned and slipped out from under him, standing and taking both of his hands to help him up and lead him down the hall past his usual door to her own. He hesitated in the doorway as Darcy wandered in, the furniture all shadowed in the dark with thin highlights from the moon outside the window. Or the floating lights, maybe. He could see his bags resting next to her dresser.

“What’s wrong?” Darcy asked, hovering next to her bed, her face in darkness.

“Am I doing right by you, like this?” he wondered aloud. “Don’t wanna rush anything.”

“I’ve wanted you since day one, handsome,” Darcy said in the same honeyed tone she used when he got too tense in an odd situation.

“You know it’s been the same for me,” he said.

He could see the white of her smile as she approached, pulling him gently forward and swinging the door shut behind them.

“Then that’s a whole year of gentlemanly behavior on your part,” Darcy said. Her arms crossed in front of her to grasp at the hem of her t-shirt and then tug it up over her head, tossing it aside. Her hair came loose in the tussle and she pulled it free, letting it fall over her shoulders and tease at the edge of the brightly colored bra that was mesmerizing Bucky. Or was standing in the way of what was mesmerizing him. He was fuzzy on the details.

“I think we’ve got catching up to do, if anything,” Darcy said.

He decided he was inclined to agree.

 

* * *

 

 

It was deep night and he was drowsy and sated, just on that last edge of restfulness before it became sleep. Except Bucky was grinning, because he knew that sleep wasn’t coming to ruin this peace. Darcy was against him, practically on top of his right side, their skin adhered together with sweat and stick and pleasant warmth. And while she felt limp and her breaths were slow and steady, he could still feel the brush of her eyelashes against his chest from her slow blinks. He could follow the pattern of her fingertips all but tickling him with their tracing movements over his abdomen.

He thought about rolling them both over, settling between her welcoming thighs again, soothing at the pink chafe marks around her lips from his stubble with licking kisses, marking up her hips until their was no spot left without a fingerprint. He thought about lifting her up above him, taking lazy tastes of her until she was sobbing for relief, of settling her on his lap and using his strength to work her around him. He thought about testing out the other surfaces available, making her door rattle, her walls shake, getting carpet burns on both their knees. He wondered if there was a threshold for not sleeping, if he could push their bodies so far that they were both forced to succumb, to break the rules of Night Vale, and fall unconscious.

Darcy nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder and rested a soft kiss against his skin before sighing and melting into him again. He tangled his cybernetic fingers with those teasing at his belly button and brushed his own hand through the tangles in her hair.

For now, he’d just enjoy a few more minutes of this drowsy stillness while he decided what way he wanted to make his girl sing for him next. They were only halfway through the night and he’d never been more grateful for sleeplessness.

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning the sun was shining and he was a complete dope. Tony would have called him ‘whipped.’ And then he would have said it was okay for him to call Bucky that because he was ‘whipped’ too. But sure, it was true, he was sweeter than syrup on Darcy Lewis.

Darcy Lewis who was strolling along at his right side - it wasn’t about the prosthetic, he assured her, it was about gentlemen walking on the street side of their girls - tucked under his arm with her hand in his back left pocket. She kept squeezing his ass and he kept warning her that he’d chase her straight to the underground bunker if she kept it up, but they just kept walking. They were sucking down slurpees and not doing much talking, just a little kissing and smiling and general…dopiness. He’d gotten his usual and she’d gotten something that was staining her lips and teeth a gruesome red and yet he just kept thinking he’d like to taste it directly from her, and if that wasn’t a clear sign of him being softerin the head than a pile of blankets on a bed of clouds then he didn’t know what was.

Night Vale was quiet around them, not that he would have noticed if it wasn’t since he already was floating on that only-two-people-in-the-world feeling, but even the Erika’s had disappeared since the day before. Every so often he’d see a flutter of a curtain, a cautious face peering out of the glass, but then they’d vanish and Darcy would hum and shift towards him and he’d forget what he was wondering about.

“Jane’s out with Carlos’s crew?” he asked.

Darcy leaned her head into his shoulder. “I think so? We either got up too late to catch her, or she didn’t ever go to bed last night.”

They definitely got up too late to catch her, Bucky thought smugly. But he’d been busy studying the fresh light against Darcy’s pink skin. He’d spent most of the night remembering his old habits of touching dames, discovering the delighted and eager responses Darcy had to them all, and the rest of the night thinking up new ones. And walking down the street with the girl he’d had begging beneath him - who’d had him begging too, if he was being honest - well, it brought back a lot of his old swagger.

Not that there was anyone around to see.

Well no one except the bean pole rushing across the street to their sidewalk.

The bean pole who was headed straight for them at a near run. Bucky narrowed his eyes and twisted to the side to shield Darcy.

“What’s up?” Darcy asked trying to lean around his side.

“Darcy! Is that you? Oh, thank god. Darcy-”

“ _Ian?_ ”

Bucky tensed as Darcy darted out from behind him but she stayed near, her hand sliding up to his back but not pulling away.

“Darcy, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” the bean pole, _Ian_ , panted. He bent over and braced his hands on his own knees as he caught his breath, giving Bucky time to study him. It was hard to tell under all the dust, and the clothes that looked like they were a stiff breeze away from falling apart, but Bucky supposed the other man might have been handsome. Maybe.

“Heyyyy,” Darcy said, chewing at her lip. “Ummm… this is kind of… but it’s been a really long time. It’s been a really long time for you where…you were, right? Cause it’s been awhile here and-”

“Darcy,” Ian said again.

“- Look, I hope this isn’t insensitive but ummm, this is Bucky. He is my…boyfriend?” she asked, glancing up at him. Bucky nodded quickly. “Yeah, he’s my boyfriend. I know you and I never really ended things but you know, you were like…gone. From this dimension.”

“ _Darcy_ ,” Ian said more urgently. “The Dog Park. It’s open.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was doubly cruel in this chapter with the fade to black and the little cliffy. In regards to the fade to black, I honestly just felt like the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your House when it came to smutting this chapter up. I wanted to give them their privacy. And in regards to the cliffy I just couldn't resist.
> 
> EXCITING THINGS TO COME! The song for the next chapter will be Park Song by the Dodos because I crack myself up.
> 
> Hug me, I've been so lost without you all!
> 
> Also come hug me on tumblr at queenspuppetwriting cause I am cuddlylike.


End file.
